Sometimes we don’t know how hungry we are for something else until what we consume stops satisfying.

Hi my name is Devi, and I’m addicted to distraction. If you have time to listen, I want to tell you a story about why I started meditating.

I still remember in 2014 spending an hour crying in my car because of something I needed to deal with and when I finished, I picked up my phone and scrolled through Twitter in the Lidl parking lot for another hour. There were parts of my life I could not look at. I didn’t realize this because for years I thought it was my phone habits that were the problem. It is easy to notice the way social media, apps or games keep our attention, but it was more than screen time. Focusing on my tasks during the day was difficult, I often wanted to escape normal down time that I typically enjoyed, I couldn’t sit for long periods of time to work on a task. My mind wandered when I listened to a long sermon or podcast. There was a current of unease that flowed through me on regular weeks, on holiday, and during my time alone. It took several years, but I slowly uncovered why I liked being distracted.

I liked parts of my life unexamined.

The truth is it had been several hard years, and when hard years go on and on, we develop coping mechanisms to get through the days. It’s almost like I broke my leg but kept walking without having it assessed and put in a cast. My distractions were the good-enough limp that kept me from the doctor.

When a Japanese gardener ‘prunes open,’ he or she cuts away not only dead branches and foliage, but also a number of perfectly healthy branches that detract from the beauty inherent in the tree’s essential structure. Pruning open allows the visitor to see up, out and beyond the trees to the sky, creating a sense of spaciousness and letting light into the garden. It also enables an individual tree to flourish by removing complicating elements, simplifying the structure and revealing its essence. The process of pruning open turns the tree inside out, so to speak, revealing the beautiful design inherent within it. Sometimes the process of pruning open requires a major restructuring – cutting back limbs and dramatically altering the form of the tree – while other times, only a gentler, more subtle reshaping is necessary.

Sometimes we don’t know how hungry we are for something else until what we consume stops satisfying. This is what happened when I felt my hunger.

For a good part of 2018, this radical restructuring slowly took place in me. It was fed by time with friends, prayer, Bible verses, music, therapy and medication. There is no one-way through radical restructuring or open pruning. It’s a team effort, it takes time.

And time has a tender way of slowly revealing next steps.

When I started reading True Youa few weeks ago, meditation became the next step. Michelle begins the book by telling us about how she started taking a few minutes every day for self-directed mental rest. She sat on the same park bench daily, in the silence and started paying attention. What followed was a year of deeper processing, of uncovering layers of her own brokenness and a discovery of what God wanted to do in her life to bring healing, renewal and a new sense of purpose. I read this, and thought, I need this. Nineteen days ago I started setting aside 10 minutes a day for, what I’m calling, meditation.

This is what I did. I told my husband I was going for a walk on a Sunday morning, I walked to the end of our street where there is a bench, and I set a timer for 10 minutes. Like Michelle instructs in her book, I tried to quiet my thoughts. I listened to the birds. And I listened to where my worried thought trails took me. I heard rustling leaves, and I heard a list of what I needed to do. It was a start. I felt more relaxed after, at the very least more oxygenated. I went on to have a great day until a few hours later I had one of the melty-downest meltdowns I’ve had in a long time. Just in case you were afraid this post would say “Meditating Changed My Life.”

It hasn’t done that. But it is changing my appetites. It is changing the strength of my mind.

It is easier to switch into work mode and work less distracted. My ability to “just write” has increased.

I move through the day less overwhelmed with all there is to do and am able to do one thing at a time and not move to the next task until I’ve finished the present one.

I can quickly spot my body’s anxiety responses and speak to it with truth.

I feel physically more relaxed.

I have an increased ability to assess situations in my life – what is really happening here? What am I responsible for? Where do I need to change? Where do I need to expect someone else to change?

My Meditation Practice

I try to aim for the same time of day. I set a timer for 10 minutes, and I sit in the silence. First I see what may rise up when I settle into the time – if it is a thought or an image, I fix my mind on it. I keep my mind focused on a particular thought or image, sometimes it is a truth from the Bible, sometimes it is a truth in my day-to-day life. I breathe in for three, hold for three and out for three until I don’t need the breaths to help me focus. I have no idea if this is mindfulness or accurate meditation, but the truth is I do not care.

Ultimately this practice has been for me about establishing a habit and a mental discipline. In the same way that doing bicep curls will strengthen my arms and help me one day do a real pull up, training my brain to think on one thing and eliminate distractions is building a muscle.

My Meditation Rules

I put my phone on flight mode.

I set a timer for 12 minutes, so that I have a few minutes to settle into it. The aim is 10 minutes daily, and I know when to stop when the timer rings.

I never let myself wonder if I am doing this right. This is the one thought that I am not allowed to think, and yes, it comes up every time I meditate. That I’m doing it is more important to me than how I’m doing it.

I don’t have a place for meditation, but this is because of my life. Some days of the week I’m home with the kids, so I have to do it in the bedroom, when I’m alone I have more options of where I can do it. I don’t put pressure on myself to do it in the same place. Again, the point for me is the 10 minutes of self-directed mental rest.

If I’m alone with the kids at home, they watch something while I’m meditating because this is the only way I can guarantee 10 minutes without interruption. Of the 19 days I’ve done it so far, only one session got interrupted by a kid who needed a box of tissues. Hashtag real life.

In conclusion, friends, I am grateful for the slow ways our lives can change. I’m grateful for the resources God puts in our paths. I’m grateful for the way Truth is embedded into various corners of our cosmos, grateful that we don’t need to fear. And I am grateful for the way God made our brains, infinitely malleable, changeable, redeemable.

Now it’s your turn: What do you think about meditation? Have you tried it? What do you do to keep your mind focused and attentive?

A few resources if you are interested in knowing more about meditation:

Hey there, lady, I was just at Kmart buying a spare (cheap) drink bottle for my boys today, and they took 10 minutes to pick which one they wanted, and I was thinking about you and me and the first day of school. Here are a few things I want us to know.

They go to school, and you go to school. We all get schooled. They learn to read, we learn how to read them better. They learn how to get along with other kids, how to add and subtract, how to create and discover and write and learn. And so do you. It will be about how use your time, how to get along with teachers and parents, how to discover yourself as your time constraints change. You’re going to learn just as much as they will this year.

When you walk up to your child’s classroom, expect to cut through a thick layer of invisible anxiety, first in yourself, then in everyone else. It is impossible to overstate the hopes and dreams and fears of every mother standing at the door as she releases her precious cherub into the ocean of the world. Every other kid looks like an octopus or a shark, and Nemo has a broken fin. Give her grace because this isn’t easy, and if you are honest, it’s not easy for you. All of us have invisible fears about our children that we hide behind our bragging and comparing. But you’re afraid, and this year you get to learn how to find your way out of the fear. You get to see the other kids as just kids who are all imperfect, all learning, and all on a pathway of discovery.

Speaking of bragging or comparing, you don’t have to do either. Protect yourself from this. When someone tells you something great about their child, it’s not an insult to your child or an invitation for you to tell a better story. You’ll find the women with whom you can connect who will have a genuine interest in your life and your kids, who don’t see your life as a threat to theirs. Wait for those people. While you wait, get rid of your own instinct to brag about yourself or your kids. There’s no need to fear, my friend. You are in process, and you are going to be ok, too. No need to come across as anything else to anyone else.

At times it will feel like you are standing in a line with your child and every smile, every conversation with someone new, every invite for a coffee or playdate is going to feel like approval, the badge that says I am Someone, I am a Good Mother, I have a Good Child. Fight against this mentality. You don’t have to talk to another person at drop off. You have time to make friends. Friendship does not come easy. It takes time to lay down a groundwork of trust. You don’t have to tell the other mums you meet every deep, dark thing about your life. You don’t have to tell them the inner workings of your family life.

It takes a long time to find other women with whom you can genuinely connect who then you can deeply trust. Waiting is worth it. And if the women in your life end up not being in school, that’s totally fine, too.

Your kids don’t become magically different at school. The responsible kid will still be responsible, and won’t lose hats or jumpers or drink bottles. The kid with her head in the clouds, will still have her head in the clouds. Get this kid cheaper things. No need to feel guilty about that, this way you can replace their things without heaping shame on them. There’s a lot for kids to keep track of at school, they shouldn’t feel bad about losing a drink bottle here or there. We’ve all lost our expensive phones, right?

The teacher gets a version of your child, likely you get a different version. Both versions are real and true, and the joy of being a parent is working to understand all versions of our kids and helping them integrate their compartments into a whole. Your teacher sees a different side of your child, and you need their insights. Your teacher is your teammate, if you work together, your child wins.

(An addendum here: There are I’m sure a tiny handful of terrible teachers out there – I’m sorry if you have one. Get on your child’s side, fill up their tanks with encouragement when they are down. Pray that the experience will teach them about empathy and perseverance. Talk to school admin. Hopefully next year will be better.)

Learn to see your child as one in a group, not the only one. The teacher has to attend to the group, and there are many others he or she needs to pay attention to. Your child is not especially deserving of unique attention. At least not more so than anyone else. Trust that every child will get the time they need. Trust that you are still your child’s number one influencer. Whatever their school cannot give them, you can fill in the gaps at home.

When you hear the thought, “My child deserves (a better teacher, a nicer table-mate, smarter classmates, more current technology),” replace it immediately with a list of what you can be grateful for. I’m thankful my kid gets to go to school. I’m thankful my child has food to eat. I’m thankful for clean water. I’m thankful for warm clothes in the winter. I’m thankful for a summer hat. Entitlement will cloud your judgment, entitlement will not let you see your kids for who they are, entitlement will steal your happiness.

Your child has unique needs that you can see more clearly than everyone else. But remember that there is a school full of kids. Every kid is there to learn, to develop as a person, to grow and to change. Learn to see other children. Learn to talk to them, appreciate them, learn to see your child as one in a group. We want them all to succeed.

Expect there to be issues between your kid and other kids. This may be the year you find out that your child isn’t as truthful as you hoped. It may be the year you find out that they like to steal or cheat or hit other kids. Maybe they started cutting class or failing a subject. Don’t let the disappointment you feel in your child become a disappointment you feel in yourself. Your kid gets to make his or her own decisions – this is true of a five-year-old and an 18-year-old. Their decisions are not always a reflection of your home or your parenting. They are their own people. Yes, you’ll have to lay down the necessary boundaries, but guess what? Your kid needs your love and your anchoring support in them as a person especially when they have disappointed you. And you and I need another lesson on how to dig deeper to find that unconditional love everyone needs.

Find the soothing words you need to use on yourself and your kids for specific stressful situations. For me it is this sentence, “We have enough time.” I always give us permission to be late. The irony of course is that we are almost never late, but giving all of us the permission to run late allows for a peaceful attitude in my heart and hopefully theirs.

You are going to need so much wisdom to know when you need to deal with something with your child and when you need to involve their teacher, other parents and members of the school. But trust that when you need wisdom, you will receive it. Walk into your decisions with a humble confidence. You can do this. Please tell yourself this every day, every week, every term. You can do this. You can do this. You can do this.

Trust that you will make mistakes.

Expect your kids to make mistakes.

Plan for the teachers to make mistakes.

See mistakes as the doorway for all of you to grow.

You’ve got a year of growing ahead of you, my friend. Here’s to the new branches in your life, and here’s to the good fruit.

Now it’s your turn: I’d love to hear from you if you’ve got a kid starting school in 2019 or continuing on in school? How are you feeling? Drop a note in the comments. Got any good tips to share with the rest of us? Just write it all out here – we need all the ideas, right?!?!

Happy New Year, friends. I hope 2019 started well for you wherever you are. I can hear the whirring of our ceiling fan as I write this. We are in the middle of what promises to be a warm Melbourne summer. It feels good.

I love thinking about the past year before I start thinking about the new one. For me there is a necessary amount of reflection needed to move forward. It’s like I can’t begin until I’ve looked back. The Internet has a gazillion tools related to thinking about the past year and planning for the next one. But for me I love answering this question: What did I learn? Here are eight important lessons from 2018.

Small changes are everything

Ruth Chou Simmons of Gracelaced sums it up for me in an Instagram post, “We make progress when we make minor adjustments, repeatedly. Not seeing impressive fruit or immediate change isn’t failure; it’s formation.” I am clinging to this walking into 2019. Small shifts in the right direction. Fun fact: Since October I’ve been going live on Instagram Monday to Friday midday to chat about this topic, and you can follow along here.

There is a long chain of people and events that help guide our direction

The short story is that 2018 was the year I started thinking about teaching writing workshops. I explored possibilities (teaching women in prison how to write their story), and no one called me back. I tried other avenues and had a meeting or two that seemed promising, but then again, no one called me back. Then in a most unexpected way, a door opened in a place I did not seek out to teach a writing workshop. The first one is February 7. This is after 10 months of thinking (well, maybe a lifetime of thinking), some exploration, a few closed doors and a random email. But it began when I read the newsletter of a poet who wrote about teaching poetry in a women’s prison. It grew during another friend’s month-long stay with us and our many conversations about injustice. Dear friends and my husband validated the idea and encouraged me to keep going. Like all good things in my life, there was a chain of people who encouraged and loved and worked to bring this thing (slowly) to life.

Follow your instincts

One of the enduring lessons of adulthood is learning which instincts to follow and which ones to ignore, but learning to listen to the instincts that I know, that I know, that I know I need to follow have led to immeasurable joy. In the middle of the year, I had this feeling that I had to learn how to garden, and I had to ride a bike. I didn’t know why, I didn’t know that I could (I still don’t know if I can grow anything), but I knew I needed to try. I have. Both activities have been two of the best parts of the end of 2018. I look forward to much more of both in 2019.

I need my friends

Friendship in my 30s has been one of the sweetest gifts of my life. Yes, it unfolds at a different pace now, we all have less time for each other, but the slow work of building trust yields rewards. We all need those women who are going to stand with us, speak truth into our lives, ask us good questions, yank out weeds from our garden and laugh and laugh and laugh (and maybe watch the Royal Wedding together as well).

Go back to the doctor

I’ve always been a person who went to the doctor because of a problem and never went back. The first appointment is a general inquiry, there were usually tests done, but now I know it’s in the follow up appointments where two things happen: the doctor has to work harder to understand you, and you have to keep telling the truth about how you really are, about the treatment and whether or not it is working. This goes for mystery physical things and for emotional and psychological matters. Before this year I never went back. I thought I was too complicated. I thought things would get better on its own. In 2018 I saw my GP six times, and it led to a new kind of health and freedom in my life. I sprained my ankle and had to see a physiotherapist at least five times. It meant sitting with a medical professional who often took my health more seriously than I took it, and something about that forced me to take myself more seriously as well.

There’s no experience like losing someone you love

Two women I loved dearly died in 2018. Their lives are irreplaceable, and there is a grief in losing them that will never go away. It was a reminder that we are made by love, the love of God, the love of others. I feel so grateful to have known them and been loved by them.

Write it down

It doesn’t matter if it is an idea that came to me while I was driving or a longing I could voice to no one. If I wrote it down, I felt better. If I wrote it down, I was less resentful of people or circumstances. Somehow letting the ideas out, letting the words out helped me to live and helped me to realize I have more to do. If you want to know more about my journal and writing tools, I did a series of videos about that here.

Endings are hard, some endings are necessary

We are conditioned as a people to think that endings are all bad, which is why we delay our endings. We stay longer than we need to in organizations and relationships that cause death to our souls. This year we decided to end our commitment to something. It was a hard decision, one we put off for a long, long time, but I have a feeling it will lead to a beautiful beginning.

My calendar tells me Christmas is a few weeks away, and it still surprises me even though I’ve known all year that it is coming. I had to go to our local shopping centre last weekend to buy (another) bag of cranberries, and I noticed how full it was at 11am. Throngs of people were out shopping the sales, wandering in and out of cheery stores, and posters were screaming at me: Buy this! Buy this!

I have only one philosophy for Christmas shopping. Get it done fast. Get it done early. Nothing can turn me into a grinch faster than navigating a parking lot on December 22. And it is so not the point. There is nothing about the western trappings of the Christmas holiday that can nurture the spirit of what Christmas is about.

Here’s how I see it. God becomes a baby to be with us. He is born to an impoverished, unwed teenage couple in a stable with animals. I’ve had two babies in a Swiss teaching hospital, complete with three course meals (best chocolate tarte I’ve had in my life) and nurses on call 24-hours a day. The thought of having a baby – God or my own – in a filthy shed with animals is unthinkable to me. But this is Christmas. It is the brightness of the star in the sky, it is the softness of swaddling clothes. It is the cries of a new born baby.

This is why we give gifts. This is the only thing that can get me excited about giving anyone a present, and here is a practical way that we apply it: A Gift Weekend.

Pick a weekend

Set this weekend aside for gift giving. If you’re single, get friends together and do this with them. If you’re married, make it a fun thing you do with your spouse (and friends if you want). If you’ve got kids, involve them in this. There are no rules – do this in a way that suits your personality and your community. A Christmas PJ and cookie online shopping party? I would go. A tour of your local Christmas market with a view to getting all presents there? As long as there’s mulled wine, I would be there. Or the easiest option for us right now – an early (in the day because parking lots) trip to the local mall.

Set an amount

Decide whom you’re buying for and how much you’re going to spend. When I have less money, my ideas are better and more creative. We give our kids $5-10 each to spend on each member of their family.

Give to others

Find something that you and your community can get behind and throw the weight of your love, energy and resources into it.

You can do it locally – find a soup kitchen where you can volunteer, find people who work in a local prison and give gifts to prisoners or their kids, partner with people in your community who are providing Christmas meals for people who cannot afford it. Or use your money to fund businesses or organizations that have gift catalogues and fundraising drives.

If you live in Australia, TEAR has the best gift catalogue – Useful Gifts. My kids will pore over it and seriously think about what they would love to get someone else in a different country. The physical catalogue is easy to read and understand – I highly, highly recommend it. We find it one of the most meaningful ways of nurturing an attitude of giving in our own hearts and in our kids’ hearts. (This is not sponsored, just our own experience.)

Wherever you live, there will be people who are reaching out to others at Christmas. Find them and partner with them.

Now it’s your turn: What do you love to do at Christmas to keep your mind focussed on what matters? Do you have any tips on how to get involved in the needs of your community? Please share them for all of us.

I was chopping vegetables with my five-year-old a while ago when he told me a story. He began by referencing something we both heard that morning, but it was his interpretation of what he heard that caught my attention. It caught my attention so much that I could feel my physical anger reaction almost immediately.

My heart beat faster. My breaths shortened. My hands started to shake. I was angry. Within seconds I was forming a response. I wrote down what he said, I formulated the story for my husband, and I started composing a mental email.

I expect my child to be exposed to misogynistic thinking in advertising and television, I don’t expect him to face it here, I wrote in my head to people involved.

I listened to my son, and I let myself get angrier and angrier thinking about it. I was so angry that at some point I realized I was enjoying being angry and enjoying having a reason to be angry about a specific group of people. The evening went on, and when we had some privacy, I told my husband about the conversation. He suggested that perhaps I didn’t understand the context. He told me the story because he and my son had been there for the whole thing. He expanded out the boundaries I put around it.

I didn’t write any protest emails. I didn’t talk to anyone. I misunderstood the context my son was talking about because I wasn’t there for all of it.

The situation with my son didn’t need an angry email from me, but after my emotions settled, I could see something else.

My anger was pointing at something.

It was like an arrow directing my attention toward a situation, a bigger situation, that needed to be addressed. The specifics here are not important, but I needed to be able to separate what I was getting angry about in the moment from what I actually needed to pay attention to. Because what it pointed at is something that required action.

The bigger picture involved an important decision we have to make. We needed to reflect on our reasons. This would mean many complex, sometimes difficult, discussions between us as a couple. It meant we needed to communicate that decision with others, people who may not understand or may be hurt by our actions. And there were many, many things in there that I needed to let go.

You don’t have to do much to find anger. Just turn on the news. Spin the dial on your radio. Listen closely to your friends. Pay attention to your emotions. We are an angry people. We know more, we feel more and that can keep us from seeing what we need to do. I wonder about your life and its specifics. What events or people push your buttons easily? What else could it be pointing to? Perhaps there is more action for you to take.

Being angry is easy, looking at what our anger is trying to get us to see can be so much harder, taking action can be harder still.

It requires our courage, vision and action. It means we need to slow down, let our emotions diffuse, let the anger go, but let the arrow remain. However difficult it may be for you to look at the thing anger wants you to see, dealing with it is what will bring freedom and peace.

Now it’s your turn: What is anger pointing at in your life? What steps do you need to take to deal with it? Is there someone with whom you could share this who could help you discern what to do next?